The Reader (2008) User Reviews (508)

Winslet Impressive In This Two-Movies-In-One Story

[ccthemovieman-1 · 9/10 · 3 May 2009]

Kate Winslet is just outstanding in this very interesting film that is almost two stories-in-one. The first part is a sexual story of an older woman having affairs with a teenage boy and the second part is her war crimes tale and what happens afterward. The first is a somewhat happy jaunt of a short story and the second is a very serious and depressing story. That's where Winslet really shines. Obviously, she's developed into an an outstanding actress.

The second part is what most people, I assume, will remember about this film. Can "Hanna Schmitz," a Nazi employee (so to speak), who was part of concentration camps, be a sympathetic character? To me, that's what it looked like that's the question the story was asking. The answer may have come in the final minutes of the movie when her ex-lover "Michael Berg," now grown up and played by Ralph Fiennes, confronts a survivor of the camp. That, too, was very intense and interesting scene. Lena Olin is riveting as "Rose/Illana Mather."

"The Reader" was full of quiet, but intense scenes. This is a very thought-provoking film, especially for one that doesn't start off that way but look almost like some soft-porn flick to get our attention. It is anything but that.

For Germans, this film must bring out many emotions and thoughts. Guilt and forgiveness are just two of the issues that are dealt with in this unique film. "Hanna Schmitz" turns out to be an incredibly simple-yet-complex person, unlike any I've encountered on film in a long time. You see her in all kinds of light, both good and bad.

Kudos, too, to David Kross' acting as the young Michael Berg. It must be strange for someone his age (barely turned 18) to do the scenes he did with 30-something Winslet.

Overall, a very different and excellent film that stays with you and makes you ponder its main characters.

Only one thing can make a soul complete—and that one thing is love The Reader

[jaredmobarak · 7/10 · 24 January 2009]

What is guilt? I believe this is the central question behind Stephen Daldry's new film The Reader. Based on the novel by Bernhard Schlink, the story asks its audience what a true monster is. If you know a secret, one that could exonerate someone from being found guilty of murder, should you help her even though you know she's accepted her guilt despite being unable to stop it? What if that person was someone you loved? There is some heavy material thrown about in the second half of this film, emotions run high and people must make decisions concerning some very dire situations. One thing is for sure, though, once that decision is made, no matter which side of the fence you fall on, some shred of guilt, some feeling of remorse, is inevitably going to follow you around for the rest of your life. This is what we call being human, because as Bruno Ganz's Professor Rohl says, "our justice is governed by laws, not morals." It doesn't matter whether something was right or wrong, it's whether it was legal or illegal. Unfortunately our souls don't work that way.

As said, these moral quandaries crop up in the brilliantly paced and constructed second half of the film. The power involved in the characters' actions all weigh heavy on those they touch. Perhaps the weight would not feel as palpable without the events of the first act, but either way, that portion of the film is too light and innocuous. We learn about young Michael Berg's, (a wonderful turn by David Kross, who is the true star of the film), affair with an older woman named Hanna Schmitz. This woman is very troubled and in a state of constant flux where her emotions are concerned. She loves Berg, but can never quite allow herself to fully commit to that feeling, her past continuously nagging at the back of her head, remembering what it was she used to do with those who read to her. Kate Winslet's performance as Hanna is quite good, but like the film itself, doesn't come into its own until the second act, when all the secrets finally become uncovered.

It is a good beginning, the unabashed love of a young 15 year old and his first sexual partner. He becomes her orator of stories and partner in romance, but they both know it could never last. School would be commencing and Berg would see the young girls his age, ever comparing them to Hanna, and her manifesting his feelings with her own jealousy, knowing that she must let him go … this time sending herself away rather than those she "befriended" of her past, those she sent off to whatever fate awaited them. Whether this violation became so deeply rooted in the boy, I'm not sure, but when he goes off to law school and crosses paths with his first love again, this time as she awaits charges of Nazi war crimes, he is torn on what is morally correct. It becomes his obligation to let the truth come out, despite the activities she partook in during the Holocaust. According to the law, he must divulge the information for justice, but his moral compass may not be able to do so.

The story truly is wonderfully acted and directed, pulling at the audience's emotions and engaging them throughout. However, while the second half is the most intriguing and resonant, it also contains the one activity that I found abhorrent. Now older, Michael Berg is played by Ralph Fiennes, a lawyer, recently divorced and with a daughter. His journey back home, to his mother that has all but given up on him as a distant figure unable to open up to those that love him, becomes one of returning memories. Discovering the books he once read to Hanna almost two decades earlier, the guilt of what he didn't do makes him set upon a mission to right that wrong. But the way in which he does so is really quite wrong to me. He seems to condemn her for what she did still and only creates cassettes of stories to send her to assuage his own selfish need for forgiveness. He never appears to care about her, because if he did, he would have made different choices in that courtroom years before. Berg shows the selfishness that followed him the entire story and really got me thinking that maybe he was a worse human being than Hanna. It's an interesting dynamic to be sure, one that subverts the somewhat "touching" conclusion the filmmakers seem to want to attempt.

The Reader is an interesting look at German guilt and the people's need to place blame on others for the Holocaust in order to somehow absolve their own indifference of doing nothing when they themselves knew what was going on. One of Berg's classmates gets the whole issue correct in a little tirade about the absurdity of the trial. Here they all were, guilty themselves of knowing what went on in the thousands of camps, yet putting on trial only six women because a survivor, (interesting to see Lena Olin play a mother and daughter—the beauty of a film spanning decades), wrote a book fingering them. Just as Germany needed to place blame, so did Michael Berg. Rather than put it on his own shoulders though, like Hanna eventually selflessly does, he decides to side with the masses, sitting back silently and then trying in earnest to deal with his eventual guilt, not to apologize to the person he let down, but to somehow forgive himself. It is quite the despicable act and I'm not sure if that was the filmmakers' intent, however, that is the lasting impression it left on me.

Right and Wrong

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 7 July 2015]

Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) re-encounters his former lover (Kate Winslet) as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.

The film raises the question of whether we should judge someone by the law or rather "the laws of the time". And there is a big difference. Of course we know that killing is morally wrong, and those who sent people to death in World War II were morally in the wrong, even if they were only following orders.

But were they legally wrong? One could argue not. That is a difficult topic. Like the women of this film, those at the Nuremberg Trial were tried and convicted under laws invented after the war. Laws written by the winners. This makes one wonder: is it right to put someone on trial for something morally wrong, even if it was not legally wrong? And who should decide the laws? Had the Axis won, they could have just as easily declared it illegal to drop atomic bombs on innocent villages and then try, convict and execute Harry Truman.

Right and wrong is no easy topic.

An insight into the humanity of the inhumane

[weltraumpirat · 10/10 · 20 February 2010]

Before I start reviewing, let me say something personal: As a German, one can hardly watch movies about the Holocaust, WWII or any related topic unbiased. As I have discovered myself, no German family is without a history related to the Third Reich, almost none are without grave guilt, or at least the fear thereof, and most who say otherwise either lie knowingly, or simply try to evade further inquiry.

Reading some of the other reviews, I realized that for me, the movie conveyed something slightly, but decisively different: It is not so much about understanding HOW people could ever do the things they did, but rather how it is possible, that people we love, and people that have been loved by people we love could be so guilty and so loving, so despicable and lovable at the same time. It is about how we expect the guilt to show up somehow, how we expect to know the killer, the monster, at first sight and say: how could anyone not have seen it? Yet we have to admit sooner or later, that we were wrong, or were we? The question really is: How could I have ever loved someone who did things as horrible and disgusting as Hannah did? And just as much: If I am unmerciful now, having learned of their guilt, is it because they did what they did, or because they disappointed my own belief in their innocence?

At one point, Hanna Schmitz asks the judge: "What would you have done?", and I think that therein lies an even more disturbing and unsettling question: What would I have done? What would you have done? How can anyone know for sure what WE would done? It is too easy to think of oneself as morally sound, with a firm belief in what is right and wrong. It's what Germans call the "mercy of late birth" - the luxury of not having been in the position to make that choice.

So, what made this movie worth giving the full 10 points out of 10? It is well-crafted, well-played, believable, at times even beautiful. It captures both the fascination Michael feels with Hannah, and his disbelief, even disgust while exploring the ugly truth about her past. It conveys the struggle between our compassion and the reluctance to show mercy against the ones who did not. It leaves the viewer with the same, disturbing questions that have not been answered sufficiently in the past 60 years (nor will they ever be). It does not provide simple answers, but rather raises more questions, left to be unanswered. As Lena Olin's Character says: "If you want Catharsis, go to the theater!"

Other than providing beautiful, well-toned cinematography, a well-written script, love of detail and convincing performances even by the supporting cast - what more can you expect from a truly great movie?

The Reader is a brilliant, sexually charged, and oddly heartbreaking tale about the complexity of human morality and the lifelong repercussions that result from our actions.

[The_Film_Addict · 10/10 · 8 January 2009]

There's an urgency in human nature to understand. When it comes to the Holocaust, history's bleak, unsettling period, it doesn't matter what book you've read, film you've seen or account you've heard; in the end, your response it halted by its incomprehensible conclusion. How could humanity course its way towards such a violent, destructive path? How could people knowingly send men, women, and children to their impending doom? Most puzzling, how could the world allow it? Even though its been 63 years since the blood-drenched annals of World War II, its aftermath today is still bone chilling.

After a six year celluloid dry spell, Stephen Daldry returns to the director's chair in a brilliant, sexually charged, and oddly heartbreaking tale about the complexity of human morality and the lifelong repercussions that result from our actions. Adapted from Bernhard Schlink's best-selling German novel, "The Reader," Daldry's visual translation is a powerful, emotionally absorbing film that is one of the year's best. It's superbly crafted.

With World War II over, Germany, in 1958, is still recovering. Deep within Heidelberg, Germany, Michael (David Kross), a young pubescent teenager haven fallen ill, is comforted by Hanna (Kate Winslet), a hard working woman who is twice his age. Taken by her generosity, Michael revisits Hanna to offer his gratitude. What begins as an awkward reunion escalates into a seductive, forbidden affair that intensifies when Michael begins reading to the distant, empty Hanna, who is deeply awakened by Michael's spoken literature. Too young to understand love's complicated implications, Michael is emotionally devastated when Hanna suddenly disappears. Nearly a decade later, unable to forget his passionate summer while studying law, he attends a Nazi trail, and to his dismay, hears Hanna's distant voice.

"The Reader" is a complex film; maybe a little too complex for some. Though the film pertains to Nazism and the "sins of our fathers," in essence, "The Reader" is a film that reflects the emotions inside all of us. During a lecture, Michael's professor comments, "Societies like to think they operate on morality but they don't." In this cynical age, how far from reality is that statement? During Hanna's trial, she's questioned why she participated in the Nazi party's horrendous war crimes, broken she replies, "It was my job." Oddly enough, that seems to be the justification most people use. Surprisingly, though, "The Reader" isn't about her exposure as a war criminal, but an exposure on an individual who took the wrong path. She's not a bad person; she's simply made wrong choices. However, when it comes to having involvement in the Nazi's liquidation of the Jews, how "wrong" can you get? "You ask us to think like lawyers," cries on student, "what are we trying to do?" A distraught Michael replies, "We are trying to understand!" But, just who exactly is trying to grasp a deeper understanding: the court or Michael? How can Hanna's past be forgiven? Director Stephen Daldry brings the much needed emotional layer that a character such as Hanna Schmitz desperately needs. Although her actions are beyond unforgivable, strangely, we sympathize with her. Maybe it's her other shameful secret. Maybe it's superb character development.

"The Reader" is a film that is driven by it's raw performances. In one of her finest hours, Kate Winslet gives the performance of a lifetime. It's a haunting and heart-breaking. David Kross, who's only 18, is impressive as the teenager with raging hormones; it's such a daring performance. Winselt and Kross bring this picture together. Their performances are jaw-droppingly brilliant. Completing the role of Michael, as the tortured grown man, is Ralph Fiennes, who balances Michael's despair through his melancholic emotion when he encounters a grown Jewish woman, played by Lena Olin, who was also at Hanna's trail. Although her scenes clock in less than 10 minutes, Olin, too, is breathtaking.

When "The Reader's" credits rolled, I sat quietly shaken by what I had witnessed. It's a film that is impossible to forget. When a grown Michael asks Hanna, "Have you spent much time thinking about the past?" Heartbroken, she replies, "It doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what I feel. The dead are still dead." She's right.

Hanna's secret - possible spoiler

[westpenn49 · 17 May 2009]

If you have not seen the movie or if you have not heard to plot synopsis please take my word for it, this movie is powerful, it may shake you to the core. It is about hard choices and how we deal with them. Now please stop reading.

p l e a s e

Hanna's secret, that she is illiterate is so crucial to who she is. We tend to understand why she acts as she does, but one of the central and pivotal decisions in the movie is Michael's decision to do nothing about his knowledge of that secret. Pay back for the hurt that she has caused? I do not think so. It is more a decision to honor her startling choice of responsibility for 300 deaths over revelation of her secret. there is no doubt that Hanna also bore guilt for the deaths. She is seemingly the only honest person in the courtroom, telling the truth when all have lied. It is only about herself that she lies. Michael could have confronted her, could have revealed the information to the court in several other ways, certainly through his professor he could access the right people, but he keeps Hanna's secret for her and suffers for it even more than he had before.

This is a story of honest and proud people trying to remain true to who they believe themselves to be. She does not intellectualize her decisions, "I was a guard." "You can't let prisoners run loose!" It never occurred to her to ask why these people were prisoners but one look at her life and we see that she too was a prisoner. This does not absolve her of her guilt, but it does explain her actions. Unlike the other guards she understands too late that there was another way and for that she accepts responsibility.

But even more than the admission in court, her decision to send Michael to New York produces the most compelling scene in the movie as the agent of the guard confronts the victim and survivor. It is heady stuff and though the victim is sometimes criticized for being cold and bitchy, how else could she be when a stranger brings such news and an apparent plea for forgiveness. And what seems like a cold inquiry, "What was your real relationship with that woman?" turns to be the source of redemption for Michael, he finally admits to another his secrets, in the scope of things they are not big, but they have weighed on him for over 30 years by that time.

One last thing, the strange sad, beautiful gift of a tin. It was the wrapping that was more valuable than the gift.

I did not always understand the motivation of the actors, but in the end their unexplained motives play out as in real life leaving us the viewers to pick up the pieces and move on.

Storytelling troubles

[Chris Knipp · 7/10 · 26 December 2008]

This isn't meet-cute. Fifteen-year-old schoolboy Michael Berg (David Kross) first encounters his 36-year-old future lover Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) by throwing up in her doorway. It's a dismal rainy day in a German city in 1958 and he has taken ill on the way home from school. She cleans him up and accompanies him to his family. He turns out to have scarlet fever, and is kept at home for months. Once he's well again he goes back carrying a bunch of flowers to thank Hanna for her kindness, but realizes he's turned on, and bolts in embarrassment while she's bathing. Eventually Michael returns and happily loses his virginity. A regular ritual of reading, bathing, and lovemaking develops between him and Hanna. He reads to her; she bathes him; the sex is mutual. She is a tram conductor with a harsh manner, and several huge secrets. She seems to be using Michael, but she's also enjoying him mightily, and he is reaping enormous rewards, though his affair puts pressure on his relations with family and schoolmates.

Bernhard Schlink's original The Reader was an international bestseller. A lawyer and judge who writes, Schlink departed from his usual detective stories with this novel that becomes a meditation on Nazism--the denial of the surviving participants and the incomprehension of Germans like Michael who were born in the aftermath. Michael's feelings toward Hanna become much more complicated than simply those of a youth introduced to love by an older woman--as complicated as the feelings of Germans about the demons in their modern past. As for Hanna, she seems to understand nothing and to be more concerned about how she appears than what she has done.

The book is in three parts. First there is the love affair of the schoolboy and the tram conductor, which ends abruptly and painfully when Hanna suddenly disappears. In the second part it's eight years later and Michael is a law student attending trials of Nazis with fellow students and their seminar teacher, Professor Rohl (Bruno Ganz). One day the young man is horrified and riveted to learn one of the defendants is none other than his long lost Hanna. She turns out to have been an SS guard at a satellite of Auschwitz and she's on trial with five other women for allegedly allowing several hundred prisoners to burn to death locked inside a church. This trial paralyzes Michael. He has never gotten over his first, interrupted love idyll with Hanna. Now he is filled with guilt for having loved her but also a sense that he should help her when he realizes he has information that might lower her sentence.

The last part, thirty years later, consists of several brief visits by Michael, first to Hanna in prison, then to the posh Manhattan flat of a Jewish woman, Rose Mather (Lena Olin), who was at the trial. She was one of the survivors and wrote a book about her experiences that was used in evidence. This provides a kind of coda.

Schlink's novel is neat and arresting, a page-turner that conceivably makes you think. Its Holocaust issues are cunningly intertwined with a sensuous--and rather peculiar--coming-of-age story told by a sensitive man still struggling to understand his experience and his country's. I read the book with interest, but found it a bit contrived. This together with Stephen Daldry's previous choice to film Michael Cunningham's The Hours shows a weakness on the English director's part for stories that are a little too clever and schematic.

This time the screenplay by the British playwright David Hare does damage to the book by altering its chronology, chopping it up and muddling the original linear three-part structure. Hare has said in interviews that the interpolated device of Michael's telling his story to his grown daughter was necessary to make sense of his voice-over. (That,however, is debatable.) Having settled on this device, Hare felt obligated to keep interjecting the mature Michael, played by Ralph Fiennes, at points throughout the film. The omnipresence of Fiennes' glum face undermines the sense of the young Michael's eagerness and, later, shock and confusion.

Fiennes as Michael revisits a cosmetically aged Kate Winslet as Hanna three decades later when she is about to be released from prison. Michael could never bring himself to visit her, but sent her tapes of himself reading the same books he read to her during their affair. Fiennes is a cold fish, hard to relate to the lively and sweet personality of young David Kross.

The film is hampered from the outset by its use of the outmoded artifice of dramatizing a story that takes place in another country and another language and yet having everyone speak English, with several of the main characters played by Brits (Winslet, Fiennes) putting on German accents. Bruno Ganz speaks with less of a German accent than they do.

There is much of interest in this glossy production, beautifully photographed on location by two of the best DP's in the business, Chris Menges and Roger Deakins. Ganz's professor is an ambiguous, subtle characterization. But since the drama of the unfolding story has been destroyed by breaking it up into pieces, the only thing that remains alive and beautiful and strange are the love scenes between Kross and Winslet. There is good chemistry between the 18-year-old Kross and the 34-year-old Winslet, and their nude scenes are bold and intimate. It's only when the machinery of what Schlink and the filmmakers are trying to tell us about German guilt and denial goes into action that things begin to be clunky and cold. Unfortunately, that is a big part of the picture.

Never underestimate the power of guilt

[Smells_Like_Cheese · 10/10 · 17 June 2009]

Kate Winslet, I absolutely adore her, she's my favorite actress of all time. I still can't believe that she hadn't won an Oscar, her first nomination was in 1995 with Sense and Sensibility. Finally after 14 long years, she finally won the coveted award with the movie The Reader. I finally was able to see this movie the other day and it blew me away, I'm still debating if this really was my favorite Kate Winslet performance, but once again with a strong cast telling a powerful story, The Reader was definitely one of the best films out of 2008. So many holocaust films have been made, it's hard to make another that stands out, but we really haven't had a story where the Nazi guards were on trial. A lot of people debate if this movie is trying too hard to push sympathy on Kate Winslet's character, but my love for this film is to just show that they were human as well, hard to believe, but that our mothers, sisters, friends, whoever could have done something so shameful.

Michael Berg in 1995 Berlin watches an S-Bahn pass by, flashing back to a tram in 1958 Neustadt. A teenage Michael gets off because he is feeling sick and wanders around the streets afterwards, finally pausing in the entryway of a nearby apartment building where he vomits. Hanna Schmitz, the tram conductor, comes in and assists him in returning home. The 36 year old Hanna seduces and begins an affair with the 15 year old boy. During their liaisons, at her apartment, he reads to her literary works he is studying. After a bicycling trip, Hanna learns she is being promoted to a clerical job at the tram company. She abruptly moves without leaving a trace. The adult Michael, a lawyer, at Heidelberg University law school in 1966. As part of a special seminar taught by Professor Rohl, a camp survivor, he observes a trial of several women who were accused of letting 300 Jewish women die in a burning church when they were SS guards on the death march following the 1944 evacuation of Auschwitz. Hanna is one of the defendants. Stunned, Michael visits a former camp himself. The trial divides the seminar, with one student angrily saying there is nothing to be learned from it other than that evil acts occurred and that the older generation of Germans should kill themselves for their failure to act then. But Michael is conflicted on what to do, if to speak out on Hannah's behalf on some of her innocence in the murders or keep quiet.

This is one of the most powerful movies I have ever seen, it was so incredible and just heart breaking. One of the things I respected about the film was the way they handled the awkward "love story" between Michael and Hannah, she's older, he's younger, but it's not even a perverted thing, so strange to say that. I don't know how to put it exactly, but their connection was real and in some sense they both needed each other. If you have the chance to see this movie, I seriously suggest that you take it, the powerful performances really make this film captivating. The story is so heart wrenching and painful, but was told so well. Kate now finally has the award she's deserved for so long and pulls in a terrific performance with The Reader.

10/10

Reading, Writing and the Wonderful Kate

[jpm-onfocus · 7/10 · 10 December 2008]

David Hare wrote one of my favorite female characters in "Plenty", Meryl Streep brought her to life in the most extraordinary way. Here, Hare writes another power house female character. It doesn't have the intellectual aspirations of "Plenty" but there is also a form of mental illness in his character. Kate Winslet is magnificent. Her early scenes with the wonderful David Kross are filled with compelling, contradictory and totally believable undertones. My misgivings are to be pinned on Stephen Daldry, the director. His sins as a filmmaker start to become a sort of trade mark, visible and palpable in the moving "Billy Elliot" and the shattering "The Hours" I can't quite pinpoint what it is but in "The Reader" that element is more obvious than in the other two. Maybe it has to do with loftiness. There are moments so frustratingly long and slow here that he lost me in more than one occasion. In any case, the cast makes this film a rewarding experience. Besides Kate Winslet and David Kross. The tortured Ralph Finnes has a couple of wonderful moments as well as Bruno Ganz and Lina Olin in a dual role.

A victim's guilt

[Michael Fargo · 10/10 · 4 January 2009]

The film is a series of profound moral dilemmas—while contrived by the author, they are fair questions—that resonate deeply in the 21st Century: The role of guilt in victims, perpetrators, individuals and collectively, as well as justice, forgiveness, redemption, shame and, of course, literacy and its role in Western thought.

All this is a pretty heady mix for a film, but Stephen Daldry (as with "The Hours" ) makes literary conceit play very naturally here. David Hare's screenplay and the remarkable cinematography of the always remarkable Roger Deakins together with a sensitive score by Nico Muhly, this is indeed rarefied film-making.

But the actors are what drag the audience into this story. David Kross is amazing as the young Michael who has to play a range of virginal innocent to wizened and bitter. It's the key role in the film, and we're all lucky he was found to play this role. And the ever confounding Kate Winslet. What an amazing career for this young actress! Running through a list of her credits, she has some of the best performances of the last decade: "Holy Smoke," "Eternal Sunshine…," "Iris," "Finding Neverland," "Little Children." But here she does something very different. Playing what amounts to a monster, we see that they too are human. Not many actresses could bring this off, but it may be her greatest accomplishment to date.

Ralph Fiennes brings a continuity to the work David Kross begins, and there's a brief appearance by Lena Olin who commands the dignity the role deserves.

I'm puzzled at the lukewarm reception to this film. I almost missed seeing it. And it turned out to be one of my favorite and the most heart-rending films of the year. All involved should be very proud.

I'd rather re-watch the Reader than re-read The Watcher.

[GiraffeDoor · 7/10 · 20 August 2022]

It's taken me a while to review this...

You know, it's rare for me to watch the film (that means "movie" in German) and THEN read the book, no disrespect against intended against literature and the films thereof.

I was in what British people call "college" but was actually high school and I had a free period last thing on Friday. I would try to get all the homework and reading out of the way so I could read something and at one point I read this.

The book has kind of skewed my vision of the movie and I suppose I owe it a re-watch to that end.

First things, first: elephant in the room: there is exactly one language this movie should be in and ever should have been in and that language beings with a G and rhymes with "merman". This cannot be said enough.

But it's good though. I was bemused to find out that my dad had watched it and sort of liked it. In any case he called "disturbing" and I suppose it is in a way that doesn't really activate until you are going over it in your mind days later and I suspect, love or hate it, it will burrow into you.

The novel is sort of a parallel of a young boy's disillusionment with the woman who quote unquote "made him a man" with the struggle of the Teutonic people to come to terms with the whole Hitler thing.

The wonderful thing about a lichtspiel (that means "film" in German) is how it can seem to fill your whole world or at least your evening but is still on the whole a very efficient non-committal medium of narrative so you're getting a much less chunky experience than the book (I forget the German word for that).

But it's all there: act one is the "dear penthouse" part which in Act 2 develops into an adorable age discrepant romance that in Act 3 suddenly gets pretty grim.

I suppose it's ultimately a retrospective on how good things never really last and there's something bad within every good thing (and vice versa).

A curiously lyrically but oddly sobering experience.

At least it's still in German accents.

A thoughtful and plausible examination of guilt.

[hopek-1 · 10/10 · 9 January 2009]

Very well acted and presented and a faithful representation of the main points of the novel on which it is based. This film encourages us to look closely at very difficult issues surrounding the atrocities of World War II. I am at a loss to understand why so many critics have been so damning of it. Perhaps it is too subtle for them to understand. It seeks to outlaw the false and intellectually lazy theory to explain the holocaust, namely that the horrors were committed by monsters. In its place we are offered contextualization, not as excuse but as explanation of how quite ordinary people were able to do extraordinarily dreadful things. We avoid these uncomfortable facts at our peril.

The Kind of Film to Admire Rather Than Fall in Love With

[evanston_dad · 7/10 · 29 December 2008]

"The Reader" is full of interesting ideas, but it suffers from lacklustre execution.

The central question at the heart of the story is whether or not we'll ever be able to distance ourselves enough from the Holocaust to understand how it was allowed to happen. Categorizing every person who played a role in it as a monster is easy and it provides an emotional catharsis, but it also prevents us from learning from history. After all, not every person who worked in a concentration camp was evil -- many of them were just people doing their jobs without any of the historical context we now have. And if we disregard them as something inhuman, we won't be able to know how to prevent something similar from happening again.

This question plays out in the story of Hannah, a former concentration camp guard (played by Kate Winslet), and Michael, played as a young man by David Kross and as an older man by Ralph Fiennes. Hannah and David have an affair before David knows of Hannah's past, and comes across her again years later when he's a law student and she's on trial as a war criminal. David must reconcile his loathing of what Hannah did with the fact that he knows she's not a monster. Hannah's real shame are not her crimes, but rather the fact that she never learned to read, and the film's best moments come in the third act when Michael, as a way of expiating some of the guilt he feels at not coming to Hannah's defense when he knew information that would have helped her case, records himself reading some of Hannah's favorite stories and sends them to her in prison.

"The Reader" is a solid piece of film-making, but it has that ever-so-slightly-embalmed quality that comes when a director and writer feel the need to be too respectful to the source material. It's sombre and tactful and always feels more like a filmed book than a movie. It never comes cinematically alive. It boasts good performances, especially from Winslet and Lena Olin, who has brief dual roles as mother and daughter concentration camp survivors. And it has one all-too-brief thrilling sequence in which Winslet's character decides to spend her time in prison learning to read -- just watch Winslet's face as Hannah recognizes the word "the" for the first time. Otherwise, it's the kind of movie to admire rather than fall in love with.

Grade: B+

A waste of time

[krawss · 1/10 · 19 March 2020]

Nothing to get from this movie its like someone whos really trying so hard to make a deep story but in fact its just no concept like literally none don't waste your time

I read it in German

[lee_eisenberg · 10/10 · 20 June 2017]

While taking a German course in undergrad, I read Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel "Der Vorleser" (which more accurately translates to "the narrator"). I naturally thought that it would make an interesting movie. Sure enough, they eventually made one. It took me several years before I got around to seeing it, but now I have.

The main gist of "The Reader" centers on the complexity of Hanna Schmitz as a person, but also on responsibility for one's actions. Hanna might have been merely a cog in the machine, but that doesn't excuse her deeds. Indeed, part of the purpose of writing the novel was so that Germany could collectively accept responsibility for its actions.

Kate Winslet (who won a well deserved Oscar for the decidedly unglamorous role) portrays Hanna as a tragic figure, someone who might have not fully understood what she was doing but probably should have, and so she did eventually have to face the consequences. In the end, it doesn't matter whether or not Hanna understood what she was doing; she still made the choice to do it.

Ralph Fiennes plays Hanna's paramour as an adult, doing what he can for her (while knowing full well what she did). Nonetheless, the movie belongs to Winslet. This is another masterpiece from Stephen Daldry, also the director of "Billy Elliot", "The Hours", and "Trash" (about some boys in Brazil's slums).

"It doesn't matter what I think. The dead are still dead."

[classicsoncall · 8/10 · 14 October 2017]

Wow, I don't know what to make of this picture. It's so good as a fictional story that it feels like it could be a true one. It presents many moral dilemmas, not the least of which is it's treatment of Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) as almost a sympathetic character when in reality she was something of a monster. During her trial, Hanna uses a standard defense used by many former Nazi defendants who stated that they were merely doing their job in whatever capacity they were employed. In one respect, one could almost make the case that there was an element of mental illness involved in her make up, particularly when she comments on why she didn't allow the prisoners in the burning church an opportunity to escape and survive. There's that, and Hanna's overwhelming obsession to keep her illiteracy a secret, to the extent of taking the fall for the other women on trial with her who may have had even more culpability, if that were even possible.

I'd like to say that Kate Winslet deserved her Best Actress Win for the picture but I haven't seen any of the other films her competition appeared in. Strictly speaking though, Winslet's performance arcs through all the ranges of human experience one can imagine and presents a thoroughly conflicted character. Ralph Fiennes also turns in a worthy performance, and I would have to concur with another reviewer who felt that the character Michael Berg may indeed have lived a wasted life. His attempt at rehabilitating Hanna in her prison cell may have seemed noteworthy, but one wonders how much of it was done out of compassion and how much out of guilt.

What probably appalled me most about the story was when the five women on trial with Hanna all received a mere sentence of four years and three months for their role as concentration camp guards. Even if one were to apply some sort of moral equivalency to their role along side Hanna, the idea that Hanna received a life sentence made their punishment seem minor by comparison. All because their feigned indignation made Hanna out to be the leader of the group, when in fact, any one of them could have expressed some humanity during the church incident that the others might have fallen in line with.

Brilliant

[Michael_Elliott · 4 January 2009]

Reader, The (2008)

**** (out of 4)

In post-war Germany a 15-year-old boy (David Kross) has an affair with an older woman (Kate Winslet) and falls in love but weeks later she disappears without a trace. Years later the man is in law school when he goes to a war-crime trial and sees that the woman has been brought up on charges. What follows will effect his life through adulthood. A few weeks back I said Slumdog Millionaire was my pick for the best movie of 2008 but that has now changed as this film will take the top spot. I expected a great movie walking into this thing but I never imagined how beautiful and touching a movie experience it would turn out to be. The film deals with a lot of ugly situations and has some downright heartbreaking moments but I love movies with great stories being brought to life with great acting. Hopefully the Oscars will treat this film very kindly because it's certainly in a league of its own. The film's basic story has the adult (played by Ralph Fiennes) looking back at his first sexual relationship and the effects it had on his life and especially his estranged relationship with his own daughter. I think a lot of what happens to a young boy will have a major impact on his life and I think that's the greatest thing about this film. What happens to be boy starting with the affair and leading up to the trials make for some very compelling drama. I'd say this is a brilliant coming of age story but I'm not sure if that would be insulting the film since there's so much more to it. The film also does a great job with its rather frank sex and nudity scenes. There's quite a bit of both but the film is very mature about it considering the age of the two people involved. The subject of the age is never mentioned as the film just treats it as one thing that happens among many others. Both Kross and Winslet were very brave in terms of their sexuality but their brilliant performances are the key here. I expected a great performance by Winslet since she's perhaps the greatest actress working today but Kross stands right there with her through the entire film. I think Kross' performance is the real key here as we're seeing all this stuff from his point a view and it's up to him to sell the story and the emotions behind it. The actor handles the awakening of his sexuality brilliantly and he's even better during the trial time scenes where his judgement is going to have a major impact on several people. Fiennes is brilliant as well in his supporting role playing the adult . He has couple emotional scenes, which I won't ruin but his acting inside the jail cell might be the greatest I've seen from him. This is a pretty depressing film from start to finish but that's often the case when you deal with a subject matter like this one. Director Daldry does a masterful job handling the different time periods and putting them all together. The story jumps around from decade to decade but all of this is handled with a problem. In many ways this is a love story and on that level I think the film hits a grand slam and turns out to be a true masterpiece without a single flaw.

A good second half

[richard-1787 · 7/10 · 31 December 2008]

The first half of this movie, which focuses on the relationship between a young man (16 or so) and a middle-aged woman, is beautifully shot but pretty empty. It is as if the talent behind something like a Merchant-Ivory film (minus the script writer) had grabbed the first story that came to hand and filmed it just to keep busy. It's beautifully done, but apparently pointless.

Then, once the trial starts, the movie gets MUCH more interesting. Kate Winslet gives a truly first-rate performance as a very difficult character whom we only come to understand over time. This second half held me.

Yet, after it was over and I discussed it with the person with whom I had seen it, I found weaknesses as well as strengths. Michael, the young man who has an affair with Hanna, is studying law and guilt, but he really never has interesting things to say on Hanna's involvement. His conversations with his professor could have been much more interesting and better written.

In the same sense, Hanna's preoccupation with order and fear of chaos, which play so important a role in the second half of the film, could have been developed in the first half. As could have been her shame over her "deficiency."

Not the great movie some critics seem to be hailing it as, therefore, but still worth a viewing, especially for Winslet's truly impressive performance.

Evil often has a human face

[blanche-2 · 9/10 · 27 May 2009]

Directed by Stephen Daldry and written by David Hare, "The Reader" is a thought-provoking and surprising drama that takes the viewer in several different directions. Though some reviewers on this site are critical of Daldry and the film, in lesser hands, "The Reader" would be a total, erratic mess.

The story is told in flashback as the adult Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) remembers his youth. As a 15-year-old boy, the young Michael (David Kross) has his first forays into sex with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) in 1958 Berlin. She helps him when he winds up on her doorstep, ill with scarlet fever; he returns to thank her when he's well. The two enter into a sexual relationship. As part of their time together, Hanna has Michael read to her. One day, Hanna simply disappears. The next time Michael sees her is in 1966, when he is a law student in Heidelberg and his class travels to watch a trial. It is then he realizes not one secret that Hanna carried with her, but two.

"The Reader" is, above all, a very human story of real, conflicted human beings, and the brilliant performances reflect this. David Kross is exceptional as the young Michael, in the throes of first, blinding passion, who, in the face of the truth about the woman he loved, endeavors to understand her nonetheless. Kate Winslet is magnificent, and that's the only word for her. Hardened by life and her unsentimental and uncompromising view of the world, she is cut off from people due to a secret she considers shameful. With Michael she allows herself some softness, and gives in to not only passion but emotion, sobbing when Michael reads a sad story to her. Winslet shows us all of this, her need to connect with someone, and her strict view of life. Ralph Fiennes turns in another excellent performance; Michael's world and his own isolation were shaped by Hanna. As an adult, he still grapples with a decision he made and his own guilt; he still tries to understand not only her but how he could love her, and in the midst of all of these complex emotions, he believes he owes her something. He ends up giving her the greatest gift he could - her dignity.

As with "Dead Man Walking," there is more to a person than his or her actions, reprehensible though they may be. We are not, after all, what we do but who we are. While some crimes are unforgivable, there is, shockingly, at times a connection with the perpetrator that allows us to see the person and extend a consideration that person never gave another. Thus murderers have loving parents and family, and someone who showed inhumanity to others has a little humanity shown them.

A very remarkable story.

About As Unbiased and Objective As Any Form Of A Medium Can Get

[alexkolokotronis · 10/10 · 28 January 2009]

The Reader is one of my favorite movies from the year 2008. It is incredibly complex in the way you react to the characters of the movie. It carries many emotions from sensuality to anger all the way back to that of sympathy and resolution. Many moves advertise themselves as unbiased and fair but nothing gets close to that like The Reader which is able to build sympathy for a character you would never think you could feel towards.

The acting in the movie was phenomenal. Especially that of Kate Winslet who draws out many emotions from whoever is watching. She plays an ex-Nazi guard who has an affair with a 16 year old boy played very well by David Kross. Her bitter, cold attitude, random behavior as well as her past history seems unjustifiable and deplorable. Yet you can do nothing more than feel empathy and compassion towards the shame and humiliation she feels about her one well kept secret. In the course of her affair she ask for one thing, to be read to. From this do you see the humanity within her. Ralph Fiennes also gave quite a nice performance as an older Michael Berg who looks back on his life and then later finds a way to open himself up through his time of self reflection and sudden realizations towards life. David Kross plays the younger Michael Berg whose performance was undoubtedly a very good one, maintaining his presence in not letting himself being totally overshadowed. Overall the performances are very deep and will keep you thinking long after you have seen the movie.

The directing and writing also was very key to the emotions felt in this movie. Every scene had to be done precisely and consistently to feel genuinely touched rather than feeling falsely drawn in. Stephen Daldry did that under his great subtle direction. The writing by David Hare allowed actors such as Ralph Fiennes, David Kross and of course Kate Winslet to give such stunning and deep performances and take the film to another level.

I found this movie to be very compelling in many ways. The emotions felt here were not cheap gimmicks but that of feeling true sympathy and forgiveness towards what we would normally describe as something wrong, shameful and reprehensible. I can't remember another film that made me feel these emotions for a character especially after learning one startling secret after another. This film succeeded in ways that almost movie would likely fail in, it did not come off as generous or light but as remarkably fair as a film or any type of medium can get shedding light on both sides of the spectrum. This is a film that is amazingly thought provoking and will bring out the humanity within all of us and should not be missed.

Complex!

[abhikthakur-1 · 6/10 · 28 January 2012]

The Reader is quite a complex movie. One can call it a romantic-drama but there are other complexities that make an interpretation of this work difficult.

At the heart of these complexities is the protagonist Hanna Schmitz played by Kate Winslet. She lives in her own world and own interpretations of things around her. She has a secret which she has managed to hide throughout her professional career. This secret affects a lot of things- including her romantic liaisons and her ignoring inhuman and dastardly ideologies and practices.

A few other undertones are also present. Notably, the fact the people get attracted to those who seem to have what they themselves cannot have. This possibly explains 36 year old Hanna's affair with the 15 year Michael, a student who can read! Although this decision, along with the other decisions she takes in her life, isn't the best one- the poor introverted lad remains pained for the rest of his life.

Perhaps that is what this fast paced and nicely edited movie intends to convey- that while this character is indeed flawed; but so are life's most general characters. This possibly explains the collective madness people in different times and different places seem to go through. Although such characters may not deserve sympathy per se, they still deserve it simply by virtue of their being human beings. Milgram experiment and 'Banality of Evil' also point in the same direction.

And for the actors, it is actually the 18 year old David Kross, playing Kate Winslet's young lover Michael Berg, who steals the show and impresses one the most. Incidentally, Kross looks a cross between Keaneu Reeves and Heath Ledger. As for Kate Winslet, I'm not sure what the various judges saw in her performance(pun intended!) to hand over so many awards! I saw the move only once- may be I missed something...

Powerful Holocaust drama

[Buddy-51 · 9/10 · 23 May 2009]

Like all works of art that endeavor to "illuminate" the Holocaust, "The Reader" ultimately finds itself looking for answers where none can be found. Yet, the beauty of the film is that it seems to acknowledge the impossibility of its task. Thus, rather than trying to resolve all the issues it raises, the movie simply lays them out before us, trusting that, in the final analysis, we will be able to come to our own conclusions about what, if anything, it all "means."

Though it is set in a number of different time periods, the story proper begins in 1958, when a 15-year-old German boy by the name of Michael Berg is seduced by a 38-year-old woman named Hanna Schmitz. For a summer, the two carry on a secret, illicit affair, wherein the woman introduces the boy to the joys of physical love, while he reciprocates by reading the classics to her between bouts of passionate lovemaking. Flash forward to 1966 when Michael, now a university law student, discovers, much to his horror, that this very same Hanna who meant so much to him in his youth is actually a former concentration camp guard currently standing trial for war crimes. The story goes even further ahead in time as a now middle-aged Michael keeps up the relationship by sending his personalized recordings of books to Hanna as she serves out her time in prison.

There has been some criticism leveled against the film that it aims to cast a Nazi mass murderer in a "sympathetic" light. Yet, what ultimately comes across in the story is not how "likable" a person Hanna is but how sadly tragic. Like all fine drama, "The Reader" goes beyond the two-dimensional stereotypes of heroes and villains to examine the complexity of human relationships and the messiness of the human condition. The movie keeps us emotionally off-balance throughout. Even in the early stages of the courtship, we are torn between our attraction to the characters as individuals and our revulsion at the difference in their ages. Hanna is particularly enigmatic as she embraces a child two decades her junior yet seems to find some strange fulfillment in him that goes beyond the obvious physicality of their relationship. Despite the touchy nature of these scenes, we get a feel for what brings these two very different characters together at this particular moment in time.

As the story moves on, the screenplay confronts many of the thornier issues surrounding what exactly happened in Germany in the middle of the Twentieth Century, questioning how so many "average" people could, at best, have turned a blind eye to the events that were occurring, and, at worst, have allowed themselves to become complicit in the mass atrocities. There's a beautifully incisive scene in which a young law student confronts his professor, demanding to know how the man has been able to live with himself for all these years, knowing that he did not do everything within his power to try and stop what was happening. In that brief, shining moment, we get a sense of what it must have been like for the people in Germany in the decades following the war when so many, Hanna included, simply turned their backs on the past in an effort to move on with their lives.

Perhaps the most complex character in the story is Michael, who, as he ages and learns more and more hidden truths about his first love, must come to terms with the fact that the woman he thought he knew on the most intimate of terms may, in fact, be an unrepentant mass murderer. Yet, love is not something that can be turned on and off at will, and it takes Michael decades to figure out just how best to deal with the moral dilemma raging in the very depths of his soul.

Michael is played first by David Kross in the period from 1958 to 1966, and then by Ralph Fiennes in the time thereafter. Both are superb, with Kross, in particular, delivering a performance of such delicacy and sensitivity that he sets the groundwork for what Fiennes is called on to do later in the film. And, of course, Kate Winslet, in the role that won her an Oscar, demonstrates yet again why she is one of the screen's great actresses.

Kudos must also go to screenwriter David Hare, who has adapted Bernhard Schlink's complexly structured novel with integrity and taste, and to director Stephen Daldry and cinematographers Chris Menges and Roger Deakins for the sumptuous look they have achieved with the film. Together, these fine artists have created a work that challenges the intellect and roils the emotions.

Good but not great

[dbborroughs · 7/10 · 22 February 2009]

Good film about the relationship of a young man who meets an older woman with whom he has an affair, little suspecting her past or how it would effect the rest of his life. Multi-Oscar nominated film is a good little drama, but one that has left me scratching my head as to it's best picture nomination.(Equally bizarre is Kate Winslett's Golden Globe win as a supporting actress when she's on screen a large chunk of the film) While I do like the film, I don't love it. I found it often as distant as the lead male character becomes. For me the problem that David Hare's script often reduces the inner conflict of the hero by having him speak not from the heart but the head. Basically, the dialog is much too clunky and it under cuts much of the rest of the emotion. Its not one of David Hare's better works (I'm a huge Hare fan and rarely has his dialog ever just sort of laid there like a dry text book). Its a good film and I do recommend it, but as as best picture contender I would discount it as not quite in the league of the other four nominees. (I'd give Winslet the edge on best actress)

Fatally flawed, could have been brilliant but wasn't

[bgillespie24 · 3/10 · 24 January 2009]

In watching movies I have a couple of basic rules. The one rule in that list that pertains to this movie is: "The actions and decisions of sane or flawed characters in a movie must make some sense in a real way". In this movie they do not.

Here are two questions that I'll ask and you tell me the honest answer. Question 1: Would you keep a secret hidden that although embarrassing would make the difference between a 4 year prison term and possible life in prison? Question 2: If you were studying law and had information that could radically change the outcome of a trial would you withhold it?

My guess is that 99.9% of people would say no to both questions. In this movie, the other choice was made for both.

This alone destroys the credibility of the film's premise, but there is much more. Here's another question: If you had a love affair with a much older women while you were 16, would you eventually take your daughter to her grave site and recite every gory detail, promising her a "big surprise" before doing so?

I could go on but you get the point. The basic premise of the movie IMHO is brilliant, that is, "how could so many people do such inhumane things to other human beings while thousands of others knew but did nothing". The gigantic problem with the movie is the question was pondered while multiple characters in the movie did implausible things.

This movie could have been brilliant; sadly it is anything but.

A Great Read

[moutonbear25 · 8/10 · 10 January 2009]

We don't know. We think we do but we don't. We make decisions or sometimes decisions are made for us but we think we've made them. Then suddenly, there we are. We can't be certain how we got there or where we will be when everything settles but we do know that we are alive. Some experiences are life altering and we can run from them or embrace them. Staying to see them through though can bring incredible bliss but also tormented turmoil. We just never know. One such experience was had by a young Michael Berg (David Kross) and is chronicled in Stephen Daldry's THE READER. How could he know that when he pulled into an alley to be sick that he would meet the woman who would shape his entire life? How could he know that getting close to her would pull him the furthest he's ever been from himself?

Of course, when you're a sixteen-year-old boy and a woman who looks like Kate Winslet disrobes in front of you in the privacy of her bathroom, how much thought really goes into the decision that has presented itself? However little it is, it is certainly less than is warranted. This is especially true in West Germany of 1958. This is a Germany that is uncertain how to proceed, how to be its new self in the eyes of the world and the eyes of its very own future generations. Winslet plays Hanna Schmitz, a compassionate woman but also abrasive and stern. Winslet strikes the perfect balance between directness and desire in Schmitz, making her complexities part of her appeal. She is a good fifteen years older than the young Berg and she knows much better than he of her country's history. What he knows, he has read in books, been taught in school. What she knows, she lived first hand. So when the two come together, naked in each other's arms, the meeting is as redemptive as it is passionate. Berg is just happy to be in love and having sex but Schmitz is washing herself clean with the youthful vigor of Germany's tomorrow.

The summer ends and so does the affair, as one would expect. Just when it would seem that the two would never meet again, life steps in to ensure that past decisions, perhaps made in haste, can come to see their consequences. Berg has grown some and is a college man, studying to be a lawyer, when he catches sight of Hanna Schmitz again. Their latest chance encounter is far less exciting though as he sees her on a class outing to a courthouse. Schmitz is on trial for crimes against humanity for her time as an officer in the Nazi party during the Second World War. Berg's memory of his first love would now become a question of his own morality. How could he love someone who was now accused of such atrocities? How could he be so intimate with someone he apparently never truly knew? And yet, now that he knows her past, does he really know how her past came to be? After all, what is the face of evil? Is it Hanna Schmitz or is it something incredibly bigger than her?

Ralph Fiennes is the future of Germany. He plays Berg as an adult. His life is orderly, very clean, crisp and cold. He made decisions that made him the man he is and he can never say whether they were the right ones or not. What he can see is that we all make decisions that either hurt or harm other people and that the atrocities committed by his past generations are not as far outside the realm of understanding as he might have originally thought. More importantly, redemption is not that far either.